Defying Vichy: Blood, Fear and French Resistance

By Robert Pike

Vichy France under Marshal Pétain was an authoritarian regime that sought to perpetuate a powerful place for France in the world alongside Germany. It echoed the right-wing ideals of other fascist states and was a perfect instrument for Hitler, who drew more and more power and resources from a beaten France whose people suffered. Resistance was an unknown until a small number sought to make a stand in whatever way they could. Each would play their part in destabilising the Vichy state, all the while rejecting the Nazi occupation of their eternal France. The Dordogne was one of many hotbeds of early refusal and its dramatic stories are here told against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Vichy France. These stories, like so many others of often ordinary people – men and women, young and old – tell of a period of betrayal, refusal and heroism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Nov 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9780750990356

Robert Pike

ROBERT PIKE is a graduate of the University of Exeter in History and French. His fascination with the German occupation of France and the Vichy period led to him tracking down former Resistance members and trawling official archives and secondary histories in order to understand the Resistance from the ground up. His quest to tell the stories of the few that acted, and the many others whose actions still remain shrouded in mystery, begins with Defying Vichy.